


Vent

by earz_wide_open



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry!Sam, Angst, Caring!Sam, Community: hoodie_time, Gen, Sick!Dean, brotherliness, h/c, hurt!Dean, spleenlessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:09:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earz_wide_open/pseuds/earz_wide_open
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean ruptures his spleen on a hunt and needs to have it removed. Without his spleen to keep his immunity intact, Dean's health takes a dive after the surgery, and his spirits follow suit. Sam, frustrated at Dean's self-destructive attitude, tries his best to hang on to his brother. </p><p>Hurt!Spleenless!Sick!Depressed!Dean, Caring!Angry!Sam.</p><p>Written for maypoles's Dean-centric h/c wishlist at hoodie_time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vent

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Language, heavy angst that occasionally hints at suicidal ideation, graphic description of scars, scary hospital situation, mentions of Hell/post-Hell stuff
> 
> This gets pretty angsty, but I couldn't keep myself from writing a hopeful ending! Also, bear with me if you're not an OC fan. I figured that if there was gonna be a doctor involved, she might as well have more a purpose than just doctoring. But really, it's The Dean Show through and through. ;)
> 
> Enjoy!

 

Dean knows instantly where he is and what he's on when he wakes up, mostly because it was a light sleep to begin with. He's in a hospital bed with the top half tilted up so he's not totally horizontal, pillows at his back and beeping in his ears...

And he's on the _Good_ Drugs.

The Good Drugs, they make voices sound like tiny tinkling bells on the horizon of your hearing; they sweep a paintbrush of pastels across your field of vision and infuse light with a rosy glow; they make whatever pain they can't completely get rid of seem hinted-at, like the pain's part of you but only vaguely, only by proxy. Just a little twinge, the ghost of pain, a spectral projection of whatever your nerves tried to scream at you. As a rule, hospitals never took chances with pain unless they suspected you were faking... What was that mental disorder again where people faked sick all the time, Munchie syndrome? No, that wasn't right...

Ah, whatever.

All Dean knows is that these meds are giving him the warm and fuzzies, which is a-ok. He also knows that he _woke up_ in a state of delaudid-induced enlightenment: there's a slice of time he can't account for between staggering into the waiting room with his left side on fire and now. Doctors're talking about it, apparently. The little jingly voices of the labcoated shapes floating around are vaguely amusing, like robots in science fiction movies who take everything way too seriously. Dean, knowing the doctors'll bug the crap out of him if they figure out he's awake – _How bad is your pain? Do you have any allergies? Does it hurt when I do this? What about this?_ – opts to keep his eyes closed and just listen...

And all of a sudden someone's yanking open his left eyelid and shining a flashlight at him, and he's as lucid as a dunk tank victim.

" _Sonofabitch!_ Woahwoahwoah, watch it, lady!" he blurts out, tongue thick and sticky from the meds, and the doctor examining him jumps back a step. The monitor beeps speed up. Dean thinks _If I have a damn heart attack it'll be their damn fault. Dammit._

"Mr. Plant," says the doctor, a youngish willowy brunette woman in narrow glasses that seem more like a fashion choice than a necessity. She's attractive enough that Dean thinks he might be a good patient for once – or at least a tolerable one. She's the only one in the room now besides him. "Glad to see you're awake," she says. "Your timing is impeccable; I just walked in."

Dean has a fleeting panicky senior moment and forgets that hospitals equal aliases ('Plant' _who?_ ). But the moment passes and he nods.

"Doctor Jenn Kelsch," she says, offering her left hand because her right one's holding a clipboard, and instinctively Dean notices it lacks a wedding ring. He takes it in his own hand, the one with the little finger-puppet heart monitor, not the one with the catheter sticking out of the back of it. He tries to fight off the aches and wooziness and seem off-the-cuff, badass. Hospitals really aren't Dean's style – the quicker he can communicate that he's rearing and ready to leave, the better.

Doctor Jenn Kelsch breaks the handshake and continues, thumbing through some charts with doctorly aplomb, "So, looks like you came in with a knock on your head, pretty nasty bruising to your left side. And abdominal pain, which is always a good reason to come in... Can't believe the triage nurses left you sitting in the waiting room for so long; you must have a high pain tolerance..."

"You could say that," Dean grumbles. His mouth tastes chalky and his head is humming. His stomach does hurt, now that she mentions it – an ominous burning swimming under the meds like Jaws under the surface of the open sea. He wants to ask where his brother is, but the doc said "You _came_ in," not "Your brother _brought_ you in," and he's too hazy from the drugs to try and contemplate the how of having gotten to the hospital, or whether Sam even _should_ be there at all. Last thing he remembers is that poltergeist throwing a refrigerator at him. Of all the nutty ways for a job to go south.

He knows he shouldn't be freaked about Sam. There've been plenty of E.R.-necessary situations where it's been best for them to split up – whether it's because of the case, the police, whatever. Still... Dean can't ignore the nagging feeling that Sam should be sitting in the bedside chair this time, especially this time, even if he has a good reason to stay away...

More page-thumbing and pen tapping from the doctor. "You said earlier your pain was an eight..." _(I said_ eight? _I never say eight... Shit this can't be good...)_ "Looks like they already got you started on some fluids and meds, so I bet you're feeling a little better right now... Temp was a hundred point six before the Tylenol... Hmm – BP's looking a bit low for my taste." Doc Jenn Kelsch is wearing her best 'doctor frown' now, a guarantee something's up. Sure enough, the next thing she says sounds spring-loaded, tense and focused, which is far from the most reassuring tone an ER doctor's voice can take:

"Mind if I take a look at your belly, try and see what we're dealing with?"

Dean casts his eyes sideways. "Not like I'm goin' anywhere," he says. He doesn't wanna admit he kinda likes this chick, in a you're-nosy-and-invading-my-personal-space-but-I-guess-it's-okay sort of way. He's always had a thing for hot women in scrubs.

Jenn Kelsch's olive skinned hand pulls the covers down and his gown up. For a short moment he prays Dean Junior won't embarrass him; he's had stronger reactions to less hot women while on more drugs. "Let me know if anything hurts," Jenn Kelsch says. She _huff huffs_ some warm air onto her stethoscope like she's fogging up a window and presses it gently to his gut, here, there, there, back there again. Dean watches her face. Her brow furrows deeper under her glasses. She's not doing a bang-up job of hiding her apprehension.

"I'm just gonna feel around a bit, now..." she murmurs, her hands replacing the stethoscope. Dean can tell she's in deep concentration; this isn't a routine check-up, it's a determination of just how fucked things are. "Again, tell me if it hurts."

Dean's surprised to find that her hands aren't cold and dry like most doctors'; they're a little on the warm side, and soft, and about as gentle as someone probing your stomach could be. She starts out low, near his hips, and moves up toward his ribs. Her prodding isn't exactly pleasant – everything in the area feels sore and tender. Dean is pretty sure the ribs are just bruised, although he has to admit it that the pain isn't like most bruising he's ever had... It's a little deeper, somehow. More urgent, even with the meds.

"Well, your abdomen's definitely distended..." Jenn Kelsch muses as she works. Dean knows the term – _abdominal distention_ – enough to know that it usually means nothing good. Now that she's pointed it out, he does feel a little odd... bloated or something. Yuck. He focuses on breathing and tries not to think about it.

"You say besides your ribs, your abdomen hurts in general," she says as she works.

"'Bout right," Dean says shortly. "Kinda just... everywhere."

"So nothing in one particular spot...?"

"Like I just sssss _AAAAHHHH dammitdammitdammit_ ," he hisses, because she's pressing on the upper left part of his abdomen and it's _excruciating_. A manic spasm of pain hurtles all the way up through his shoulder – his _shoulder_ , for Chrissake. Son of a bitch, she's not even touching his ribs...

He sees through the pained tears in his squeezed-up eyes that Jenn Kelsch is nodding; like all doctors, she doesn't seem surprised at his reaction. She says, like a friggin' mind reader, "Did you feel pain all the way up to your shoulder just then?"

Dean can't bring himself to form intelligible words. He nods and lets something between a grunt and a groan burst out of his lips.

E.R. Doctor Jenn Kelsch, M.D. is now wearing her best 'just-as-I-suspected' face. For a split second there's something else in her eyes – pity, or some other non-doctorly emotion, like she's actually feeling his pain. Maybe it's just the meds. Whatever it is, though, the extra emotion's gone pretty quickly and Jenn Kelsch is all business, striding over to the curtain and leaning her shoulders out into the ward.

"Hey Christy," she says, and there's definitely a nervous clip to her words now, "let's get somebody from imaging down here for a CT. Room 22-C."

 _STAT_ , Dean adds to himself with a nervous grin.

"Somebody from imaging" shows up in nothing flat; it's making Dean even more nervous that he's in the E.R. and _not_ having to wait forever to get tests done. Jenn Kelsch is briefing the "somebody," talking a mile a minute. "Trauma to the upper left quad with severe localized pain and rebound tenderness, diffuse abdominal pain, referred pain in his shoulder. BP's one thirteen over seventy two and not getting any higher."

"So basically?" radiologist dude asks, but judging by his tone Dean's sure the guy knows the answer already.

"You're gonna wanna check for blush and splenic laceration."

"Woah, woah, _woah, woah, woah_ ," Dean says, making a T as best as can with his wired-up hands and his drugged-up brain. "Time out, Kerry Weaver. I'm not gonna give you the go ahead to microwave my insides until I know everything _you_ know. What the hell's wrong with me – in English, not freakin' Grey's Anatomy Pig Latin."

Jenn Kelsch wears her best doctor's "I-save-people's-lives-and-this-is-how-they-thank-me" face. She wraps her arms around the clipboard and rocks back on her heels. "Dean," she says, "you seem tough, so I may as well give it to you straight. Odds are, you have a ruptured spleen and it's bleeding out into your abdomen." She says 'ruptured spleen' like anyone else would say 'hangnail.'

Dean's eyes pop so hard he's afaid they might eject themselves from his face.

"Don't sugar-coat it," he chokes. He knows what internal hemorrhaging means. Every hunter knows what internal hemorrhaging means – surgery, exploratory at the least. Sometimes a major open surgery, big old incision, blood transfusion, the whole nine yards. He hears the monitor beeps speed up and thinks _where is Sammy ah god where the hell is Sammy_ , and then a violent rip of pain from his ribs to his navel blurs his vision. He slams his head back against the pillow and curses through his teeth.

He thinks he hears a voice saying take it easy, take it easy, and suddenly a morphine torrent whirls into his head and reels it like a top.

He's half-conscious from the meds by the time he's lying belly-up in the CT scanner. The diagnostics room is dark and gray-blue. The little red light on the scanner prompts him to hold his breath while the machine clangs over his stomach. With the meds detaching him from it all, he sees his situation clearer, like he's looking down on himself. Now the idea of blood filling his abdomen isn't as disgusting as it is fascinating, almost amusing... Sammy would probably bitch him out for thinking about it that way, though... Good ol' Sammy... He pictures his brother's face hovering over him – Sam's fists are reaching down and clenching around Dean's shouders on the gurney. Little tears sparkle in Sam's eyes.

 _Dean, you're an idiot_ , Sam says like he's Jack talking to Rose in the goddamn Titanic, _you're so stupid. Can't you see you're dying?_

_Can't you see..._

As he's being wheeled back from diagnostics, Dean starts to feel dizziness and chills that can't be explained by a morphine high. He's curious about why his vision is so damn blurry. He hears doctors shouting things about "BP dropping" and wonders if gas prices are finally getting lower...

He's in the O.R. counting down from a hundred before the CT scans even develop.

 

****

When Dean is halfway between sleep and waking, he sees white light and hears muffled voices, like he's lying on a cloud and wearing earmuffs.

 _...They let him_ sit _in the waiting room bleeding internally for_ how _long?_

This place was really... freakin' white. Sam sounded... Sam sounded really pissed... _Who_ was bleeding internally, now...?

_Mr. Plant, your brother would have needed the same surgery regardless of how long he waited. He's resting now; the procedure went as smoothly as it possibly could have gone. The blood transfusion is for what he lost–_

_What he lost while you guys were screwing around not diagnosing him? ...No, no I'm sorry. Thank you for everything you've done. I just..._

_F_ _or what it's worth, your brother put on a very brave face until the last few minutes. A lot of the time, people in the hospital exaggerate; it's rare for them to do the opposite._

_I just find it hard to believe that you base your priorities on who's_ acting _the sickest._

 _You have to understand, sir... What Dean was going through... I have_ never _watched_ anyone _shove down the pain of a ruptured spleen that convincingly. The organ was a mess when we took it out, one of the worst I've ever seen._

_Well... I hope your learned your lesson..._

_Yes..._

_he..._

_vaccines..._

Dean fell asleep again.

****

"You're gonna have to break all the mirrors in motel bathrooms from now on, Sam," Dean croaks.

He's out of the recovery room and back in his usual bed. Has been for a couple days. There are oxygen tubes jutting up his nostrils. A bore needle feeds fluids into his neck; they ran out of veins after his blood transfusions. He tries not to think about it. He feels listless and parched and sore.

"Why's that?" asks Sam. "Don't you think you've had enough bad luck for one lifetime?" Sam's long legs sprawl out from the bedside chair. He's resting his chin in his palm. He looks haggard and pale.

"I'm not gonna be able to look at it," says Dean, "the damn..." He can't even say it. What is he, four?

"Hey, enough with the drama. You haven't even seen the scar yet; how do you know it's that bad?"

" _You_ heard the doctors, Sammy," Dean says miserably. "They frickin' gutted me like a fish from breastbone to belly button."

"So you wouldn't rather have that than a slow death by internal bleeding?"

"Believe you me, it wasn't gonna be slow," Dean snaps. He clenches his jaw. He feels hollow, and not just because he's down an organ. The world looks like a white sock that got stained because it went in the wash with the darks. The only thing with any color is a little plastic vase full of flowers on his bedside table that Sam insists he didn't buy. Dean doesn't wonder who did – they're not cheering him up, anyway.

"At least you get to go home today," Sam says in an asinine attempt at hopefulness. Dean can tell that he's holding something back, wonders how long it'll take to draw it out of him.

"Yeah, I'm gonna love nursing my Frankenstein gut wound on Bobby's couch with a decades-old heating pad and doctor's orders not to drink booze."

Sam's eyes flash. "You're not helping yourself by thinking like that."

"Man, I don't know _what_ to think," Dean growls, the strain of talking sending a fire through his stitched-up diaphragm. "'Case you haven't noticed, Sam, I don't have a goddamn spleen anymore. That's not exactly like losing a baby tooth." He grimaces.

"I just mean," Sam replies, trying not to let his fists clench, "that stress hormones can make your pain worse."

"Well I don't give a crap about pain. I'm pissed. Pain doesn't change that."

Sam's face flushes with anger. "You know what, Dean? You _should_ care about pain, because the doctors said you nearly killed yourself ignoring how miserable you felt."

"I was hopped up on freaking _morphine_ , Sam. I could barely think, let alone judge whether I was bleeding out. Where were _you_ , anyway?"

"I was out saving some _kids_ , Dean! I thought you'd be mature enough to demand faster care from an _Emergency Room_ staff! If it were me, you would have carried me past the waiting room and into the O.R. yourself."

"Well it wasn't you, was it? It was my spleen and my problem."

Sam jumped to his feet. "I can't believe how _selfish_ you sound right now! Don't you think I care whether you live or die? I'm your god damn brother, Dean! I'm so sick of you not giving a shit what happens to you. Whether or not you're healthy doesn't just affect _you!"_

"So I guess you don't care about those stress hormones anymore," groans Dean, sweating through new waves of pain, digging for a way to end the conversation.

"No..." says Sam. He's shaking his head. There are tears on his face. "No no, no you are _not_ gonna turn this around on me, not when I was so scared I was gonna lose you..."

And now Dean's eyes are watering too. This is just terrific...

And then (Dean hears _Fight Club_ in the background: "And just then, in our most perfect moment together...") Doctor Jenn Kelsch does the doctorly "knock-on-the-door-but-enter-the-room-regardless-of-whether-anyone-said-'come-in.'"

When she takes a good look at Dean, her face is weirdly guilty. Maybe she had a thing for him after all. Maybe she still does. Her eyes are a little hard to read behind the glasses, though.

"How's your pain?" she asks tiredly.

Dean gives her a nice long stare, thinking _How do you_ think _my pain is you crazy heartless gentle brutal sexy sexy woman._

"I'll order you one last dose of morphine for the road," Jenn Kelsch says. She doesn't appear to have heard his inner monolgue, which is really a shame. "You know, you can go home as soon as this bag of saline is done. Recovery's mainly going to involve doing as many 'healthy things' as possible. You're gonna need rest and as many fluids as you can get your hands on. I'm prescribing you pain meds and antibiotics to ward off infection.

"Remember, earlier we went over ways to take better care of yourself without your spleen, which normally would help you fight infections. You're going to be more susceptible to the flu, pneumonia, staph, foodborne illness... I made a list of recommended vaccinations and a number you can call to set up the appointments for them. Call us or a doctor's office _right away_ if you start to feel sick. That means sore throat, runny nose, bad indigestion, anything. Just..." she pauses, looking up from her clipboard to meet Dean's eyes. "Dean, I've seen your type come through here before. Promise me you're not going to rush back into things. Take some time to get better, alright?"

Dean really hates Jenn Kelsch – E.R. Doctor Jenn Kelsch, M.D. – with no wedding ring and bouncy brown hair and cute glasses and warm soft hands. He really hates it when the people he wants to listen to give him advice he doesn't wanna take.

Still, somehow he hears himself grunt, "Alright." And that's that.

As she's turning to go, Jenn Kelsch stops.

"You're really lucky to have your brother, Dean," she says. "Not every patient I admit has someone who's willing to stick up for them the way Sam stuck up for you in the recovery room."

Dean barely knows what she means by that, but he can imagine Sam making a stink about how the doctors didn't act fast enough with the whole "busted spleen" situation – and when he thinks about it that way, he feels a little better already.

Jenn Kelsch keeps looking at him for just a second too long. Dean puts two and two together and says:

"Thanks for the, uh... for the flowers."

After his IV gets taken out and all the release papers are signed, Sammy helps Dean get his clothes on, making sure to be careful for the scar and the IV bruises. He pulls socks onto his big brother's feet and ties up his black bootlaces. Dean grumbles a little about Sam being his handmaiden, but never pushes his brother away. He also never looks down at his abdomen.

Dean drifts off just before he feels Sam lift him out of the Impala to carry him into Bobby's.

 

****

The recovery was slow, sure... But it was nothing compared to this.

This is Dean's first case of the flu-sans-spleen. And it's a nightmare come true.

He'd been up and about for a couple weeks since the surgery, feeling a little sore and itchy but otherwise fine. Bobby's was a more permanent home base than it had been in years previous; Dean needed a real place to crash at the end of the hunt – not a motel they were gonna get booted from by the maids in the morning. It was pretty smooth sailing, so much so that Dean couldn't help but think about the other foot looming over him, waiting to drop. He thought about _1408_ , that movie with John Cusack and the haunted hotel room. John Cusack is a skeptic author writing a book about haunted hotels, and when he enters the room that almost kills him in the end, he says, unimpressed by how normal it all looks, "Show me the rivers of blood."

 _So_ , Dean says, _hey, spleenless existence. Any-freakin'-time, now. Show me the rivers of blood._

The other foot drops – drops a mountain of fatigue on him at the end of a D-list salt-and-burn in northwest Texas, his second time back on the job.

Behind the wheel of the Impala at midnight, he feels his scar burning and tickling from stomach to spine like a bad omen. He shakes off the dust on his brain and the stacks of lead weights on his shoulders and tries to see straight. He's cold as Hell – yep, Capital-H Hell. _For destruction ice is also great, and would suffice..._ God, now he's rambling old poetry to himself.

Some fifty miles later there it is, the unnatural heat running up the back of his neck and into his face. Fever hotter than a damn witch's undercarriage. Shakes burrow into his bone marrow. His eye sockets ache and his jaw hurts and he just wants to curl up with a fifth of Jim Beam and go to Cloud Nine. He tries to hum _"_ Ramblin' On" to himself but the ripping shocks of pain in his tonsils stop him short. He twists his face up. He beats his palm against the steering wheel, thinking _come on, man, come on, you can at least drive to Bobby's._

Another twenty miles passes before he has no choice but to wake up Sammy, who takes one look at Dean and unbuckles his seatbelt to switch sides.

Dean spends the rest of the ride to Bobby's stretched anemically across the back seat with an emergency blanket wrapped around his trembling shoulders. Every once in awhile Sam asks him if he's "hanging in there." He replies with a wretched and cantankerous moan, which he figures could be interpreted as a 'yes' or a 'no' or both.

From his spot on the couch under a grizzled gray comforter and a cold compress, Dean can hear Sam phoning the hospital that did the surgery.

"Yeah," Sam says, "he seemed pretty fully recovered from what I could tell... Well, I know it can take longer than three weeks, but... Yeah, it came on really suddenly, like two, three hours ago... Just a bad fever so far, and weakness, aches and pains... The vaccine appointments were all scheduled for a week from now... Yes... I'm waiting for the thermometer to finish, it's an old one... Lemme just..."

Dean hears Sam's footsteps approaching the couch. They sound like underwater drumbeats – or maybe that's just his skull pounding. Sam takes the glass thermometer out of his mouth; glass was all Bobby had. Dean opens his heavy eyelids just enough to watch Sammy shake out the mercury-filled rod and then shake his own head.

"One oh two point four," Sam says into the phone.

 _Well,_ Dean thinks, _rivers of blood, here I come._

"Alright," says Sam, "yes... Okay... Okay... Thanks, Doctor Kelsch... And yeah, I'll let you know... Yeah, bye."

Sam comes back over and kneels at the side of the couch. He puts the back of his hand on Dean's cheek. Dean doesn't want to deal with touchy-feelies right now. His body is a disgusting heap of chills and sweat and cramps – Sam pawing at him is the last thing he needs. He can't even reach his hand up to swat Sam's away, though. It's like his bones are made of pure aches and weigh a ton each. Goddamn flu.

Sammy throws him a little sympathetic grin. "Dude," he says, "I think that lady doctor at the E.R. might have a thing for you."

"Hey hey," Dean moans. "Doctor-patient confidentiality. Hippopotamus whatever..."

"The Hippocratic Oath?"

"Yeah, that thing... What happens in a splenectomy stays in a splenectom _ah.. ahh... CHHFFfft!_ Ohhhhhh sneezing is _not_ good for my insides... Jeezus..."

"Heating pad?" Sam asks.

"Why not – I was starting to miss the damn thing, anyway."

Sam gets him the heating pad, and Tylenol (with codeine, a great add-on from Jenn Kelsch), and a new cold compress for his sweltering forehead. None of them do too much good. Dean's been sick before, sure, but this is an _astronomically_ new level of sick. It's like each of his cells is screaming for chicken soup and Nyquil and holt/cold wraps in massive quantities. If he isn't shivering, it's because he's in the middle of a sneezing fit like his nose just got shoved into a feather duster full of paint thinner. The coughing starts in pretty soon; every hack feels like he's trying not to drown in slime.

The gut pain is back with a vengeance, Freddie Kruger in angry red stripes and slasher claws. Dean figures it's pretty easy to ignore a ginormous abdominal scar when sneezes and coughs aren't pulling the area tighter than a noose. Now that he's putting stress on the wound, it's cramping up like there's no tomorrow.

He wishes he could cough himself straight to sleep. God knows his body's tired enough. No such luck, though. Not with his temp as high as it is. The weird hot buzz of the fever covers his bones like poison caffeine, stranding him in the awful dizzy desert of half-sleep. He has nightmares about things that normally wouldn't bother him at all, simple things like blenders and creaky swing sets and the smell of dead leaves. The dreams are terrifyingly nonsensical and disjointed. His heart pumps weird colors through his veins like the frickin' Electric Daisy Carnival. If Sammy's at his side still, Dean doesn't see or know it. The spins and fever have him stuck on a deserted island.

"Wilson!" he cries experimentally, pretending he's Tom Hanks in _Castaway_. "Wilson, come back!" He chuckles a little and then hacks up half a lung. "Wilson..." he groans between coughs.

What feels like days later, someone lowers him, shuddering and twitching, into a giant pile of ice.

He hears the someone, who's imitating Sam's voice, telling him a bunch of bullshit about lowering his fever and trying to keep him away from the hospital and loads of other mock-soothing crap. He strikes out with a fist and hits air and feels his whole world collapse into a sea of flashing lights. He beats himself up for wasting his energy on that one stupid, stupid punch. Now he'll have nowhere to go when Alistair comes for him, that asshat motherfucking...

_I hear Hell's nice this time of year..._

_Hell's nice..._

_Nice ice, nice nice ice, nice nice ice ice, ice..._

The cold hits him for real and eyes shoot open like somebody pressed the button on his consciousness's launchpad.

Holy sweet mother of _god_ it's freezing. Sam's leaning over him and shit, he's naked, isn't he? Naked in a bathtub full of ice.

Peachy.

Dean's battered, fevered brain can't think fast enough in time to keep him from looking, and even as he screams to himself _don't look don't look don't look,_ there's The Scar, the thing he's managed to avoid laying eyes on for so long.

And man oh man, what a sight it is. Bobby and Sam took the staples out a few days ago, but that doesn't make it any less ugly. Boy, is it ugly. It's a thick, raised, shiny red welt, a little wider than a pencil, crawling down the middle of his abdomen from right under his pecs to just past his navel, speckled with angry little puncture scars on either side from the staples. All the skin around it is puffy and pale, like it’s afraid of the lesion that’s stuck on it. He wants to pass out or hurl or something just from looking at it, but he's too numb, too sick, too cold and too tired to do either of those.

So he bites his lip, groans a quiet, quiet _dammit_ , and keeps shivering.

 

****

"You maybe wanna call Doctor Kelsch back about this whole thing?" Sam asks. He smiles a little. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind hearing from you."

"Shove it, Sam," Dean croaks, glowering. He's sitting up a little on the couch now, wearing that tatty old black hoodie, still covered with compresses and hot water bottles. He cradles a cup of decaf in shaky hands. He feels ten times more lucid, the fever replaced by bone-deep soreness and some dark heavy emotion he can't explain. "I was a patient, she was a doctor. She did her damn job, she's not some googly-eyed slut – and I don't know why you give a rat's ass whether she wants to hear from me anyway."

"I dunno..." Sam replies, scratching the back of his neck. "We usually don't keep in touch with people from emergency rooms, but this situation... uh, it's a bit more long-term. You should get medical advice so you can get back to living your life."

"Yeah, some life..." growls Dean.

"Man, I don't get you sometimes. You seemed fine on the hunt."

"That was before my freaking spleen starting haunting me." A hacking fit wrenches Dean's lungs; he spills a bit of coffee on his hands and hisses at the burn.

" _Call the doctor_ , Dean," Sam says, taking the coffee away so he won't spill any more. "It's not that hard. I'll do it for you if you're feeling too sick–"

"I'm _fine_ ," Dean barks, "just gimme the damn phone." He knows Sammy just used his handy-dandy reverse psychology on him, but it doesn't matter. Whatever it takes to get Sam to shut up so he can sleep.

Dean hears the dial tone (which does squat for his headache) and shoos Sam out of the room with a swatting motion.

As soon as he's sure Sam's gone, he presses "End" and then says a few "uh huhs" and "sure thing, docs" and "til next times." He puts the phone down on the floor next to the couch, rolls over in all his sweat and chills and aches, and greets unconsciousness with open arms.

 

****

It takes a good two weeks for the illness to wear off.

Dean coughs and coughs and coughs until he thinks he's being smothered by his own lungs. Sometimes he lets Sammy rub his back through the black hoodie, other times he's so angry and humiliated that he shoves Sam off of him and goes it alone. He coughs until he's sure he might gag or tap out. He never does, which is a frickin' miracle. The fits hurt his stomach so much that he's chain-popping pain pills like they're Pez. In his darkest hour, he starts to imagine Jenn Kelsch's flowers and immediately curses himself for being such a wuss. Each coughing fit leaves him limp as a worm, and dizzy, and rubbing the skin of his nosebridge between his fingers. He'll lie down, all trembly with the heating pad snug against his gut, fall asleep, and get woken up by another set of coughs.

Sammy calls the hospital back after a couple days of respiratory hell and realizes that Dean never got in touch with the doctor. Sam's pissed, and hurt; he swears at Dean and almost starts crying again. He ends up storming out of Bobby's house to drive to the nearest town and pick up prescriptions for antibiotics and an inhaler that Jenn Kelsch sent to the local pharmacy. Dean thinks the little piece of plastic is nerdy and moronic, but when Sam finally forces him to use it he feels his chest clear up a bit.

Dean watches a lot of movies and gets a lot of sleep and (when Sammy isn't around) drinks a _whole_ lot of booze. The fever comes and goes, tricky bastard that it is, but after the antibiotics it never gets so high that he has to take another penguin dive into an ice bath. Sam doesn't talk about Dean's hallucinating Hell while delirious, but Dean can tell Sam knew it was happening. The fact that Sam looks at him funny now, with that sickening pitying stare... It's almost worse than Sam begging him to "talk about it."

Dean knows Sam is freaked – the kid's always asking him if he feels feverish or if he has chills. He's trying to nip future flashbacks in the bud. A sick lump squeezes together in Dean's belly when he thinks about Sam freaking tiptoeing around him, like he has a screw loose, or he's fragile, breakable.

God, he detests all of it. He's not fragile. He's not breakable. He's just swimming in a cocktail of vicodin and booze and bile, not really giving a crap whether he's working a job anymore. If his phantom spleen wants to hold him prisoner in his own meat suit, then whatever. His loss, his problem. It doesn't matter whether he's fighting demons or ghosts or germs: he's fighting all the same. He wakes up in the morning, struggles against new symptoms until he can't hold them back – and when he can't hold them back anymore he drinks half a fifth and goes to sleep and wakes up the next morning and does it again.

Oh, he's doing a job, all right: he's beating off sickness until he ends up wasted, ill, and passed-out. Some job that is.

A lot of the time he doesn't know why he keeps going; he's never been super into self-preservation. He's pretty pissed at Sam most of the time – Sam and his transparent strength and pitying comfort – so if he's holding on, Sam is only a small reason why. He's drinking enough that whatever illness he catches might as well kill him, so dying is off the table. Dean fights because what the hell else is there to do? He's not gonna go down because of a stupid knock on the ribs by a stupid goddamn poltergeist.

He stares into nowhere a lot, feeling his heart thump into the empty space where his spleen used to be. He thinks about the phrase "vent your spleen," about how it means laying into someone, letting off steam, getting pissed enough to do something about it. Dean doesn't even have a spleen to vent now.

And the irony of it all really sucks ass – because now more than ever, he has a reason to vent it.

 

****

A week later, when Sam is sure he's strong enough to travel, Dean gets all his vaccines done. Sam pretty much has to drag him out of the house to do it.

He and Sam aren't on the best of terms lately, to say the least. Sam keeps digging up Dean's empty bottles of whiskey, or realizing that he didn't take his dose of antibiotics at the right time. Dean always shrugs it off, says he forgot about the dosage time, or he was thirsty, and Sam would silently pound his fist on a table or on the armrest at the end of the couch. There would never be a shouting match. They're past shouting matches now. Usually after an altercation, they would sit and watch TV together without talking, like some old-ass couple trying to hang onto their marriage while it went to shit.

Now, Dean stands on Bobby's porch watching the dusk settle. He drinks a beer with his left hand; his right arm hurts like a bitch. Five vaccines in one day was a little much.

Sam has the 9 o'clock news on inside the house, loud enough that Dean can hear it through the screen door. A story's airing about how a guy in Chicago shot his father. Dean listens instinctively to see if there might be a case, and there almost is... The shooter seemed to have no motive other than really, really wanting to gank his dad, for some random disagreement: he just walked into his apartment one day and bam.

Dean shakes his head and takes another swig of his beer. He's just about to tune the news story out when he hears an extra detail he can't seem to ignore: the son was technically the dad's caretaker. The dad had some incurable disease... Parkinson's or something. He needed 24/7 care, the son couldn't afford a home, and little by little he just couldn't stand the old man anymore. And that was that.

Dean turns over his shoulder and glances at Sam through the window. Sam's hunched over, elbows on his knees, eyes tired and red-rimmed. He's been through the ringer lately, Dean realizes.

 _You're really lucky to have your brother, Dean._ Jenn Kelsch's words in his head, clear as a bell.

After Dean finishes his beer, he goes inside, grabs an ice pack from the freezer and a handful of ibuprofen from the kitchen counter. He walks over to the couch with the ice pack, takes a kerchief out of his pocket, and lets Sammy tie the ice around his arm. He doesn't say a word – not even anything about Sam being his handmaiden... Not a single word except "Thanks, Sammy" when it's done. Dean offers Sam a couple ibuprofen; he can tell when his kid brother's nursing a headache. Sam accepts the pills with a thank you of his own. They watch the rest of the news together, one of them jumping in with the occasional funny commentary, or a suspicion that there might be a case in one of the stories. Dean knows that tomorrow probably isn't gonna be as easy – he might get sick again, or drink again, or Sammy might get jumpy and angry. But here they are now, and it isn't that bad. It really isn't.

Later that night, when Sam's asleep, Dean calls up Doctor Jenn Kelsch at the hospital. He tells her that he got the vaccines, that he's feeling better. He asks if she'd like to see him again, maybe next week... "you know, for a follow-up or whatever you call it." She says "that would probably be best... Otherwise I wouldn't be doing my job." It sounds like she's smiling behind her glasses. They set a date and time. She'll have the E.R. desk clerk send him a reminder. They hang up.

Dean feels a little lightheaded as he hangs up the phone.

He shrugs. Must be a side effect of the vaccines.

A week later, he walks into the E.R. holding a bunch of flowers.

 


End file.
